The Song Of A Bluebird
by soupersoup
Summary: Fires can burn, but offer warmth. Rivers can drown but quench the thirst. Earth can crumble, but home the mountains. Air can suffocate, but lend a breath of life. Life will give, and life will take. In the end, Truth will prevail.
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's Note:** I recently just binged the show and wanted to do a little piece because honestly, I couldn't resist. I wanted to work on a small project. Although I included a main OC, I'll try to write in the character POV'S in later chapters as the story is not completely OC-driven - so you have your typical pairings._

 _Also I really suck at summaries._

* * *

 _There are six who have made encounters with me. Or rather, six who have made exchanges._

 _One sought to pour her love into her child._

 _So I took her womb._

 _The other beheld his sought out future._

 _So I took his sight._

 _The other wished to feel his mother's warmth in her caress._

 _So I took his body._

 _The other desired to leap towards their mother, and bask in their brother's embrace._

 _So I took his leg._

 _And I took his arm.  
_

* * *

It is a cool, quiet night in Dublith. The only sounds that befalls on Rumi Cooper's ears are the running of the tap and clanking of spoons beneath her, the warm presence of her children playing from her left, and on the right is silence. A queerily peaceful silence that she had hoped for which was the absence of her fervently preoccupied husband. A sigh escapes her as she watches from out the kitchen window - how the vast field stretches towards the horizon and how the dry grass dances underneath the starry autumn sky.

Even after finishing up she finds herself gazing through the glass. Everything seems so quiet outside, as if the world is still and empty, save for the graceful sway of the grass. It is so eerie, yet simultaneously so peaceful. A sigh escapes her while a squeal emits from one of her playing children. She turns around, a hand on her hip to assert her authority yet a warm look in her eye.

"Oye. You two. Let's see which one of you can run the fastest to bed, eh?" she utters, leaning in to the two while they only stare at her with beady brown eyes before their legs got them running. Rumi watches the two small figures getting upstairs - one quick on her feet while the other toddles in every step and lags behind, shouting the unfairness in the situation to the elder of the two. Rumi smiles to herself solemnly at the bustle of their lives inside, and takes another glance through the kitchen window - the world still as a beautiful painting.

The murmur of her eldest is clear as she stands out their bedroom. Rumi softly opens the door to peak inside, and finds something warming her heart.

"... the little boy sits confused. 'You will sing for me?' He asks the blue bird who nods.

'As a favor, for all what you have done,' the bird says and he sits peached upon an tr-"

"Perched, honey," Rumi corrects her daughter, now leaning against their door frame. She watches the two, the younger snuggling by his eldest's chest underneath the covers the book staring at their faces. "Not peached."

"Oh," Maya says, looking back in bemusement at the book. Her eyes scan the page before sheepishly grinning at her mother and lifting the book in offer.

"Well...only for a while, until your father gets back," explains Rumi before getting underneath the covers, warming up next to her children who patiently wait for her to recount the tale. Miles, her youngest, climbs without a word over his sister to rest his head upon the warmth of his mother - deaf to the protest of his sibling. Rumi heaves a breath and picks up the tale, and the night goes on.

If only, she thinks, she could freeze time then.

Now a year later, the flowers feels almost soft in her curled fingers, and so she gently places them down. The cold gray stone stares at her and it feels as if it almost burning through. With her fingers tracing the engraved words ' _Miles A. Cooper' ,_ the recollection comes running to her.

The screeches of the car still synchronizes in her ear. It was funny. It never seemed so loud before but then, it seemed to drown her own anguished screams. She remembers the lifeless body and how a crimson stream slid into the grass, staining the earth. And in that moment, nothing existed, and she crumbled along with the reality around her.

A tear manages to escape the eye and run down her cheek. He is five years old now. Is… was. Referring him in past tense only made him feel further away from her. Quietly a hand slips into hers, and Maya squeezes it tight. Yet Rumi hasn't sensed a newfound aura in her daughter.

She sits mostly in the kitchen, or in the study - anything to keep her remembering from her late son's birthday, her hands working almost automatically around the house. Not a minute to rest, she does this till the horizon swallows the sun and the moon shines down on them. But what that night would bring was unbeknownst to her.

Keeping busy around the house or the study works to some extent. Maybe being engrossed in a book would suppress this feeling of sorrow at an early demise, and anger at a needed departure of her husband. He claims that if he furthers his research there might be a light to the end of this crumbling, unceasing tunnel. That Miles, her _sweet_ child, would find his way to her arms again. It sounded impossible. After all, the dead cannot be brought back to life. Resurrection was thing of fiction and myth.

But if it could bring him back.

There is a sudden wrack of guilt. Trying to keep her mind occupied has kept her sidetracked from what she had left. She hadn't seen Maya anywhere around her, and a feeling of dread stirring in her chest bemuses her. What was this ominosity?

And as if on cue, a scream erupts from upstairs and before a thought could form in Rumi's mind, her legs run upstairs. It was every step she took that a thought struck in her mind light a bolt of lightning. How could she be so neglectful? Why did she allow herself to wallow in her grief so much that it blinded her? And then a more grim thought: That scream did not sound like her daughter.

It sounded grotesquely inhuman.

Rumi nearly slams the door open and what she sees she cannot believe. It almost does not feel real. The well-known circle on the floor did not feel real. The terrifying creature resembling a deconstructed human that is beyond mangled did not feel real as its hollow eyes bore into hers. The blood pouring out of her daughter's mouth did not feel real as it stains the floor, still dripping as she cries in involuntary silence. As deformed as the body is, Rumi can _tell_ who it's supposed to be. And it breaks her ineffably as the tiny rotten arm is lies lifelessly outstretched towards her - as if crawling back to her warmth once more. It did not feel real.

Or rather, she did not want it to be real.

It is a quiet, cool night in Dublith. The great brick walls of the Cooper house soaks the events of tragedy that has occurred within it, while outside the earth lay still and empty.

* * *

 _The other of the six wished to recount tales of wonder to her little brother._

 _And so I took her tongue._


	2. Chapter 2

_There once was a pyramid amongst the vastness of the desert, and atop it was man. He sat so high that the glare of the sun would hinder the others sight, and especially those whose intention was to climb this pyramid as to take his place. And many failed._

 _So I came at night, and I struck my stone._

 _And he fell._

* * *

Colonel Roy Mustang sits with his elbows propped up, his intertwined fingers resting on his lips. The neat stack of papers that sits at the edge of his desk stare at this nonchalant man who shows no inkling of fear towards a deadline. The remindful clock on the wall ticks the seconds away, every tick closer to the impending noon. Unbeknownst to the unamused glances of his subordinates who drown in their own paperwork, Roy internally sighs. Work is the last thing he can afford to think of, what with that killer on the loose. And besides,

He is lazy.

The ringing of the phone sounds from besides him, interrupting his thoughts. He reaches out, clears his throat. "Hell-"

"Yo, Roy!" The lieutenant colonel's voice is cheerful as ever from the other end, which dims down to a more serious note. "I've got some news."

Roy's alertness kicks in, but knowing Hughes...

"Elicia…. _drew something for me_."

...It could be anything.

The colonel's face twitches in vexation while the man at the other end does nothing but gush. He can almost envision him, swaying to and fro and drowning in his endearment on a private military line as he rambles about the bane of his existence.

"Hughes! Do you think this could wait? I'm working." It wasn't a _complete_ lie even though it brought him dismayed glances from his subordinates.

"Oh, what a coincidence! I'm working too. On that fanatic of your kind," Hughes says, his voice going low. "There's been sightings of a man resembling Scar lurking in alleyways after yesterday's casualties. No doubt it's him."

Yesterday's casualties. The colonel recalls the coolness of the night, the slight breeze passing through as they stand - Lieutenant Hawkeye beside him among the group of uniformed men -before the two crumpled bodies. A neat sheet was draped over them, blinding the colonel of what horror lay underneath. Yet the pocket watch that lay uncovered beside the body devoid of life, a crimson stain on silver, was enough a glimpse. With the walls of the building painted in blood - a careless, chaotic splatter- it was without a doubt Scar's doing. The Silver Alchemist and the Stone Alchemist were dead.

"...so far with it and the Element Alchemist is in recovery. It's been the fourth in a week," Hughes sighs, and Roy only knits his brows.

 _The Element Alchemist…?_

 _Oh. The one who can't speak._

"Roy?" The colonel's thoughts are interrupted. "You know why I'm telling you this."

"For all we know, anyone of us could be next," he states plainly, and there is a rather grim agreement on the other end of the line.

"You've got to have people watching your back, at a point like this." _At a point like this._ It is understood among them, the weight of the words and the meaning it burdens.

"That's why," Hughes grim voice utters but with a slight insinuation. "Get yourself a-

Roy slams the phone shut, ending their short lived conversation. He knows _very well_ how that sentence ends, and his faces twitches in irritation again. It is definite that persistent Hughes will never leave him, and so he emits a frustrated sigh. His ungloved fingers intertwine once more to rest on his lips as he sits there in thought. He recalls the aridness of Ishval and him among a circle of comrades sitting against rubble of war. Hughes sat beside him, while Hawkeye was in his direct field of vision. They sat solemnly in silence after the damage they caused, Hawkeye absentmindedly staring at his gloved hand bearing a familiar mark, and so he removed them. They were many who felt the same as they did then, but simultaneously they were many who didn't. The Silver Alchemist was among the former, he remembers vividly, as they spoke briefly about the chaos.

' _War takes everything from everyone. And it leaves so many undeserving with nothing but an ugly emptiness,' he said, slowly turning to the Colonel. 'If war takes, what does it give?'_

It is partly The Silver Alchemist's words that still stick with Roy, but mainly it is the hollowness of the voice the words were said in that encompasses him in guilt. He briefly closes his eyes, knowing that he would be present for their burial tomorrow. And when he opens them, his sight lands on his trustworthy lieutenant, her eyes focused and sharp and he thinks that she surely does live up to her surname. But a what a secret her clothes hide, that only he was privileged enough to know. His eyes then glance at his hardworking subordinates.

Central can't handle Scar's case. If he were the one close it up, it would be his ladder to climb. And he will climb, however much he has to so as to sit atop this pyramid, and protect the ones under.

The tick of the clock is somehow louder now as he snaps from his thoughts, and now the time reads a little more than fifteen to noon. The papers sitting at the edge now _glare_ at him and he grits his teeth, taking the first sheet and racing the clock all the while shouting at the unfairness of the load of work and time, earning him many exasperated looks. Yet they all knew beforehand.

The Colonel is lazy.

* * *

 _ **Author's Note:**_ _I'm sorry this chapter is small, or seems hurried. But I always wanted to write in Roy's perspective. I might add a few chapters later on, but for now I hope you guys enjoy this! :D_


End file.
